Cracker Barrel furor was about more than a logo. Stop erasing America's heritage. | Opinion

I don’t often get out to Cracker Barrel, but I’m always happy when I do. I live in Los Angeles, where the nearest location is several communities away. But when I'm traveling in the South, I'll veer off a long country highway for rest and nourishment in a place that evokes the charms of home.

Not my home, necessarily – in LA, we have restaurants like Denny’s and IHOP. Good places to stop for breakfast (even if breakfast is at midnight), but I like Cracker Barrel more. Denny’s is a corporate brand with a bright logo and a perfectly hospitable environment for just sitting down and eating. What it lacks is what most chains lack, and that is a sense of culture − much less a sense of heritage.

Cracker Barrel evokes culture and heritage in a specific and richly American way. Put the accusations of wokeness aside, the corporate office’s now-abandoned decision to change the Cracker Barrel logo from its traditional country imagery to something generic and sterile felt like an attack on a beautiful American cultural identity.

Cracker Barrel backlash was about more than a logo

That is why so many Americans were angry about this unfortunate rebrand, and rightly so.

Cracker Barrel was born in Lebanon, Tennessee, in the late 1960s. Its founder, Dan Evins, was from Smithville, Tennessee, and came out of the oil business. He had a vision of a dining experience that presented the feel of an old general store with rustic accoutrements to truckers and travelers on the interstates crisscrossing the South and Midwest.

Over the years, the company has grown to nearly 660 locations in 44 states, becoming one of the most iconic eateries in America. But what makes Cracker Barrel stand out is the authenticity conveyed by its food, its design and, yes, its logo.

Kentucky Fried Chicken is iconic, too, in its own way. But it’s hard not to look at Colonel Sanders as much more than a mascot. When one walks into a KFC, you don't expect to be treated to an environment reflective of a traditional, distinct American culture.

Cracker Barrel has managed to preserve that feeling, even as its locations have scaled. There is something comforting about that. In an era that has witnessed the sweeping growth of corporate genericism, the proliferation of sports stadiums named after cell phone companies and office stores, and the phenomenon of “brands” at the expense of “names,” Cracker Barrel has been a place that feels real.

It no longer felt quite that way, with the change of the logo. What once was a name that looked like it was written with a paint brush reading “Cracker Barrel: Old Country Store” with a lima-bean shaped emblem and an old man in overalls sitting in an old wooden chair leaning against a barrel (in the early 20th century, small town southern stores used to sell barrels of crackers around which people would socialize), became for a short time a perfectly symmetrical, hexagonal shape with a clean generic font that symbolized nothing.

Even Trump weighed in on Cracker Barrel controversy

Amid the backlash from both customers and even our nation's president, the company thankfully announced a quick retreat from its corporate misadventure. The new logo was scrapped like last week's leftovers. The old man is now back in his rightful place, welcoming the tired and the hungry to a roadside oasis.

Yet, this controversy was about much more than a logo. America's culture wars came into play, with many on the right accusing Cracker Barrel of going "woke" by eliminating its traditional imagery.

America has a long history of corporate eradication of all things unique, parochial and beautiful. So the now defunct logo change may have been more about corporate efficiency than cultural pandering.

It is true, though, that corporate America has been willing to embrace cultural themes that catered to younger, multiethnic audiences. McDonald's and Pepsi, for example, have marketed themselves specifically to Black Americans, working to win credibility with a consumer base that is not only diverse but also values diversity.

Target marketed its stores to people of color, richly celebrating Black History Month and setting aside profits to steer toward charities focused on communities of color as a part of its larger diversity, equity and inclusion structure. But it then abandoned those commitments after the election of President Donald Trump. Target's decision provoked boycotts from many Black Americans and progressives.

The transactional and patronizing relationship to culture and heritage is not a good thing. But big corporations are rarely rooted in authentic commitments to culture and community of any kind.

A corporate entity like Cracker Barrel, which does have a cultural identity, is a decidedly special thing in a society as materialistic as our own. And so long as the values of the company are family friendly and welcoming to people of all walks of life, it is rarely something that people from outside of a given culture will have a problem with.

I don't like to see corporate identities being caught up in the culture war, and while conservatives in America have discovered that they can boycott as effectively as progressives, it doesn’t make me happy to see such things become the norm.

Still, the inexplicable corporate desire to fix what is not broken reveals something very sad about what many in corporate America value and fail to value.

Americans are right to value their roots and cultures. If you are going to build a consumer base by appealing to these things, you better make it a commitment that lasts.

John Wood Jr. is a columnist for USA TODAY Opinion. He is national ambassador for Braver Angels, a former nominee for Congress, former vice chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, musical artist, and a noted writer and speaker on subjects including racial and political reconciliation. Follow him on X: @JohnRWoodJr